Meet our People

Kate has broad experience in company mergers, acquisitions, contested takeovers (including Takeovers Panel matters), capital and debt raisings, continuous disclosure, and general corporate advisory work. Kate is a specialist in corporate governance and regulatory matters and investigations, including compliance and regulation of credit, financial markets and services, funds management, prudential and financial services executive accountability regimes, licensing, and anti-money laundering/counter terrorism financing.

Kate has government policy experience with the Federal Treasury. Among other things, Kate was the Chair and Convenor of the ASIC Enforcement Review Taskforce and the Government expert panel on corporate whistleblowing, the chief policy adviser on the design and development the corporate collective investment vehicle and was Australia’s representative in multilateral negotiations with Japan, Thailand, South Korea and New Zealand to establish the Asia Region Funds Passport. Kate was also General Counsel and company secretary to the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (responsible for the development of professional standards in the financial services sector) for two years.

Kate has in-house legal experience as well having spent two years as chief legal adviser to the head of ASX Investigations & Enforcement, six months as head of compliance at UBS AG (on secondment), and stints as general counsel to ASX listed companies. Kate also has ASX listed company experience as a non-executive director and committee chair.

Since 2008, Kate has been rated by peers as a Best Lawyer in a variety of categories including Regulatory Practice, Financial Institutions, Tax & Accounting Law, Class Actions, and ADR & Litigation. Kate is recognised by IFLR in the areas of Banking and Finance, Corporate and M&A and Restructuring and Insolvency.

Kate is also the legal expert advising LexisNexis on training modules for stockbroking, financial markets, and corporate whistleblowing.

Current and previous corporate directorships:

• Non-executive Director of ASX listed company Hipages Group Holdings Limited (HPG), Chairman of HPG Remunerations & Nominations Committee, and Member of HPG Audit & Risk Committee (since 1 December 2022).
• Non-executive Director and Chairman of the Board of public company Biennale of Sydney Limited (since July 2014).
• Founding director of ICLC Foundation (2014-2019).
• Director of the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (2017-2019).